eBay dives deeper into the social networking pool
Over on MicroPersuasion, Steve Rubel breaks down an Auctionbytes report of eBay's decision to Launch Blogs, Wikis and Search Tags.
The report outlines how eBay will be introducing eBay Blogs, an eBay Community Wiki and other social networking tools to give sellers additional ways to market themselves.
Steve thinks it is a good move:
eBay Blogs will enable sellers to more efficiently market their products.
Working off the Auctionbytes story, I dug a little deeper and found more details including a tag/search platform. The eBay Blog help pages here and the wiki information pages here.
So if an eBay seller uses tags like "Pez", "dispensers" and "collectibles" they can increase their visibility in search results. All blogs will also support RSS.
I would not be surprised to see the company take this a step further and build eBay into a giant social network that lets like-minded buyers and sellers find each other.
Not all are convinced. David Binkowski, for example, is sceptical of the idea:
The biggest gripe from Ebay sellers has nothing to do with their items not turning up in a search or the ability (or lack thereof) to blog -- it's the rising price of their fees.
Additionally, a lot of sellers are already spending time taking photos, creating listings, doing their homework on price points, etc. -- What makes Ebay think they'll want to cut more time out of their day to blog? I wonder what big eBay retailers like US-based iSold it, Germany's dropshop and the UK's newly funded Auctioning4u think about this. Given their volume, can they contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation on eBay? Is there a way that they can facilitate the publishing of information from their own customers? If so, they'd become powerful sources of auction-based conversations, recommendations and commerce.
Technorati Tags: social.networks, blogs, commerce, ebay
Saturday, June 03, 2006
 Comments:
Auctioning4u welcomes the introduction of wikis and blogs to eBay. We support any way which makes eBay a richer experience for buyers and sellers. Publishing content will allow sellers to establish themselves as authorities in their field, reassuring buyers.
I disagree with David Binkowski that people will not want to spend more time on eBay. Those people who enjoy using eBay on a regular basis will jump at the chance to form stronger relationships within the eBay community and casual users will be able to benefit from increased information about eBay's plethoria or products.
Trevor Ginn, Head of Consulting, from auctioning4u
# posted by Trevor Ginn : 5:31 PM, June 23, 2006
I'd like to respectfully disagree with Mr. Ginn. Ebay has a system for determining who's who and who's trustworthy -- it's called feedback.
They also have features like Me Pages and Guides where sellers can establish themselves as "experts".
Finally, Ebay has problems with their current set up that should be fixed before introducing other potentially flawed options. I'm referring to their search function, which has been changed, some say experimented with, over the past month to display listings in different ways.
And by different, I don't mean better. I mean results that aren't showing sellers items. Not good. There are lengthly discussions of such problems on the Ebay forums/boards.
At any rate, a recent pitch for work led me to research specific brands on Ebay and the dissatisfaction of sellers with Ebay fees -- without mention of the lack of or newly introduced blogging feature.
Will the tagging items within blogs help with search results? Sure. But I challenge you to search for health information on blogs. 99% of them (and that's an estimate, don't hold me to it) are spam blogs for v1@gR@ or C1@L1S.
# posted by David Binkowski : 4:37 AM, July 05, 2006
Ahhh.. But David I fear that you stray from the point. The reason that eBay is where it is today is because of it's community, and anything which it can do to strengthen this can only be good for the company. We have seen in recent weeks that eBay has been experience growing pains and anything it can do to make reinforce it's community is a no brainer. Looking at the explosion in the popularity of blogs and the success of Wikipedia, you can hardly blame them for jumping on the band wagon. Lastly, how are fees relevant to this issue?
# posted by Trevor Ginn : 11:39 PM, August 19, 2006
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